Taroudant- According to the Saudi website Okaz, the Moroccan government has agreed to supply Saudi Arabia with housemaids, but maids below 45 years would not be allowed to fly to the Saudi Kingdom.
Taroudant- According to the Saudi website Okaz, the Moroccan government has agreed to supply Saudi Arabia with housemaids, but maids below 45 years would not be allowed to fly to the Saudi Kingdom.
In addition to the age of the maid (no younger than 45), “the conditions also include that the Saudi family seeking to hire a Moroccan maid must be a big rather than a small family,” Khaled Alabbad, head of a recruitment office in Saudi Arabia, reported by Okaz as saying.
Alabbad added that the problem facing the national recruitment offices is the lack of formal offices in the supplying countries, which makes the process of completing the proceedings extremely difficult.
According to the recruiting offices, hiring one Moroccan maid costs around SR15,000 (USD3,999) and their salaries range between SR1,500 and SR1,800 (USD 479) a month.
The same source added that given the complexity of obtaining a visa for Moroccan maids, Saudi families prefer to take advantage of domestic workers from other countries.
With the age restriction and low income, it seems that no woman beyond 45 would take the risk of leaving her homeland for such an offer just as the recruiting families would not be eager to rely on the services of an old woman.
Because of the Gulf kingdom’s rifts with Indonesia and the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, home to more than two million domestic servants, has to find housemaids and workers from other countries.
Despite the negative stereotypes and debasing labels assigned to the Moroccan women living in the gulf countries, like “husbands takers”, “sex workers”, many women are earning nobly a decent living in the Gulf countries, while others were victims of work contract traffickers.
It is worth to mention that many foreign workers in Gulf countries are still working under the sponsorship system known as Kafala, which require foreign workers to have local sponsors, This rigidly binds migrants to their employers, enabling the latter to commit abuses, while preventing workers from changing jobs or leaving the country.
The International Labor Organization (ILO) and the organization of Human Rights Watch has previously criticized the sponsorship system applicable in the Gulf States and considered it as a comparable to slavery.
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